Faith No More: Classic or Dud

Points dismissed to KFAD in that the second side has a long string of parodic ballads and throwaway mid-tempo jams that don't do much for me. The opening 8 or 9 songs are gold tho

Maybe it's just the production on AD not lighting things up for me then. Small Victory is a fairly straightforward mid-tempo rock song to my ears. But now you mention it Stevie, yeah I hear the elements you mention but everything's just totally blown-out and the rave samples are so deeply buried in the mix they're hardly audible.

I like the visceral howl of Digging The Grave. Yeah, no rapping or rave samples, but I mean, the first Korn album had been released by then so

that one song could be a Tom Waitsian character portrait, the next could smoosh rave music into thrash metal, the next could be a macabre subterranean epic about wanking, and it could close on an aching John Barry cover.

Haha, at first I read this and thought you were talking about KFAD. Same could apply really. Maybe not the smoosh rave though, no. It doesn't have the wild'n'funky thing they'd done on previous albums - it was a much smokier, almost jazzy affair

the rave samples are so deeply buried in the mix they're hardly audible.

They're all over "It doesn't bother me / no" bit of the chorus! The production's fine, DL, I think it's your ears that need squeegeeing!!

i don't really hear any samples in that chorus but whatever, I love that song and Martin's guitar playing is a major reason why. I feel like he's not getting the credit he's due here. Yeah he's a metal guitarist, but he's not a wanky player, he has a really great command of tone of melody, everything he plays adds another dimension to the songs which is just gone after he left.

“Everything’s Ruined” lights up over a 15-second Martin solo. He absolutely contributed to what’s so great about that album.

The stuff that bores me on KFAD are the tracks like “Star AD,” “Take this Bottle,” and others I can’t think of currently. They’re fine songs, but they’re not what I’m looking for when I listen to FNM. I guess the unpredictability is part of the appeal, but I prefer the madcap nature or “Be Aggressive” to weird genre exercises.

Maybe the difference between my feelings about KFAD and some on this thread are that I never felt disappointed by KFAD when it came out. It didn't sound like a band running out of ideas to me - if anything it sounded like it had more elements of Disco Volante-era Bungle than Real Thing era FNM. As Martin's guitar work on AD is being underrated by some; so is Spruance's on KFAD. My one criticism of KFAD is that it's a song or two too long. I have this complaint about many CD-era albums that came out around that time. I would have been fine with them dropping "Take This Bottle" which I almost always skip.

I agree about "Star AD", but the song has grown on me over the years. "Take This Bottle" less so.

I love the guitar work, and solo, in "The Last to Know" so much.

I like Star AD a fair bit. Take This Bottle is... a kind of dull and overlong attempt at doomy country balladeering, yeah not essential

It makes me wonder really where FNM sit between themselves and Mr Bungle. Most of us, it's safe to say, come to Bungle for the madcap genre-fucking spectacle of it all, which is part of the appeal of Angel Dust it seems. So where does that leave Patton's FNM other than a more trad version of Bungle?

They're two different bands

They are, but don't you think Patton's fascinations had a huge influence on both bands (not to mention his other projects)?

I think there's the manic Naked City/Zorny every-song/sound-is-different side of Patton, but he's also into prolonged genre exercises (as is Zorn, sometimes, too). Exotica, Morricone soundtracks, lounge music, etc. It's been a while since I listened to many of his albums, but iirc the prolonged exercises often lacked the zip I wanted from him. "King for a Day," imo, sounds more akin to that stuff, less unhinged, more steady/disciplined, maybe.

I think Bungle was a bunch of friends from nowhere California growing up on the same influences and molding them into a sound, and FNM was 4 or 5 guys throwing their own unique backgrounds and obsessions into a bowl and seeing what comes out

Yeah, Bungle always seemed more like a team/gang. FNM, I don't know much about the individual dudes, how divergent were their tastes and backgrounds?

Like iirc when I talked to Billy, he told me that he basically sent the "Another Body Murdered" recording to Mike to do his thing on it and got back all those screams and was like "You sure this is what you want to do?" and obviously that's the version we hear today

Yeah, Bungle always seemed more like a team/gang. FNM, I don't know much about the individual dudes, how divergent were their tastes and backgrounds?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 22, 2023 2:55 PM (nineteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, Billy and Roddy were teenage punx who grew into post-punk, Puff liked Ozzy but all three of them were intrigued by rap and electro emerging in the early '80s, Jim was obviously a metal dude who was buddies with Metallica, Mike came from Bungleland which was basically bizarro thrash metal then Boingo ska then Zorn kitchen sink nuttiness and then he spent the Angel Dust press cycle basically trying to get people to listen to Hanatarash and Kids of Widney High

The disparateness is what makes them such a unique and special band

i think of patton as having a bigger creative force in bungle than he does in FNM.

Another Body Murdered is so savage.

Roddy and Billy went to high school together in LA

Xp it really is. 30 years on and it still sounds genuinely dangerous

Patton's ooohh-ah-oohhh bassline is the perfect stage-setter for the boo-yaa voices, he absolutely shouldn't have come up with a verse